Ampere's Law

Ampère's circuital law, discovered by André-Marie Ampère in 1826, relates the integrated magnetic field around a closed loop to the electric current passing through the loop. Maxwell derived it again electrodynamically in his 1861 paper On Physical Lines of Force and it is now one of the Maxwell equations, which form the basis of classical electromagnetism.

In its historically original form, Ampère's Circuital Law relates the magnetic field to its electric current source. The law can be written in two forms, the "integral form" and the "differential form". The forms are equivalent, and related by the Kelvin–Stokes theorem.

Integral form

In SI units (the version in cgs units is in a later section), the "integral form" of the original Ampère's circuital law is:

or equivalently,

where

is the closed line integral around the closed curve C;

B is the magnetic field in teslas;

· is the vector dot product;

dℓ is an infinitesimal element (a differential) of the curve C (i.e. a vector with magnitude equal to the length of the infinitesimal line element, and direction given by the tangent to the curve C, see below);

denotes an integral over the surface S enclosed by the curve C (see below; the double integral sign is meant simply to denote that the integral is two-dimensional in nature);

μ₀ is the magnetic constant;

J_f is the free current density through the surface S enclosed by the curve C;

dS is the vector area of an infinitesimal element of surface S (that is, a vector with magnitude equal to the area of the infinitesimal surface element, and direction normal to surface S. The direction of the normal must correspond with the orientation of C by the right hand rule, see below for further discussion); and

I_enc is the net free current that penetrates through the surface S.

There are a number of ambiguities in the above definitions that warrant elaboration.

First, three of these terms are associated with sign ambiguities: the line integral could go around the loop in either direction (clockwise or counterclockwise); the vector area dS could point in either of the two directions normal to the surface; and I_enc is the net current passing through the surface S, meaning the current passing through in one direction, minus the current in the other direction—but either direction could be chosen as positive. These ambiguities are resolved by the right-hand rule: With the palm of the right-hand toward the area of integration, and the index-finger pointing along the direction of line-integration, the outstretched thumb points in the direction that must be chosen for the vector area dS. Also the current passing in the same direction as dS must be counted as positive. The right hand grip rule can also be used to determine the signs.

Second, there are infinitely many possible surfaces S that have the curve C as their border. (Imagine a soap film on a wire loop, which can be deformed by blowing gently at it.) Which of those surfaces is to be chosen? If the loop does not lie in a single plane, for example, there is no one obvious choice. The answer is that it does not matter; it can be proven that any surface with boundary C can be chosen.

Differential form

By the Kelvin–Stokes theorem, this equation can also be written in a "differential form". Again, this equation only applies in the case where the electric field is constant in time; see below for the more general form. In SI units, the equation states:

where

is the curl operator.

Note on free current versus bound current

The electric current that arises in the simplest textbook situations would be classified as "free current"—for example, the current that passes through a wire or battery. In contrast, "bound current" arises in the context of bulk materials that can be magnetized and/or polarized. (All materials can to some extent.)

When a material is magnetized (for example, by placing it in an external magnetic field), the electrons remain bound to their respective atoms, but behave as if they were orbiting the nucleus in a particular direction, creating a microscopic current. When the currents from all these atoms are put together, they create the same effect as a macroscopic current, circulating perpetually around the magnetized object. This magnetization current JM is one contribution to "bound current".

The other source of bound current is bound charge. When an electric field is applied, the positive and negative bound charges can separate over atomic distances in polarizable materials, and when the bound charges move, the polarization changes, creating another contribution to the "bound current", the polarization current J_P.

The total current density J due to free and bound charges is then:

with J_f the "free" or "conduction" current density.

All current is fundamentally the same, microscopically. Nevertheless, there are often practical reasons for wanting to treat bound current differently from free current. For example, the bound current usually originates over atomic dimensions, and one may wish to take advantage of a simpler theory intended for larger dimensions. The result is that the more microscopic Ampère's law, expressed in terms of B and the microscopic current (which includes free, magnetization and polarization currents), is sometimes put into the equivalent form below in terms of H and the free current only. For a detailed definition of free current and bound current, and the proof that the two formulations are equivalent, see the "proof" section below.